RIM Delays Software Update For Its BlackBerry PlayBook

Research in Motion said the new operating system, intended to correct such omissions as the inability to send email without being linked to a phone, won’t be ready until next year.

IAN AUSTEN

OTTAWA — Research in Motion, which has already been troubled by product delays, has now put off upgrading the software for its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet until February.

The delay will most likely sink the chances of significant PlayBook sales during the holiday buying season, and also raised concerns about delays in the release of a new line of BlackBerry phones that the company hopes will revive its business.

“Delays are probably the biggest issue that RIM is facing,” said Ken Hyers, a senior analyst with Technology Business Research in Durham, N.C. “The risk is that it will become irrelevant.”

The new operating system is intended to correct several obvious omissions in the BlackBerry PlayBook, most notably its inability to send or receive e-mail without being linked to a BlackBerry phone.

During an earnings announcement last month, RIM’s co-chief executives, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, suggested that the release of the update was imminent, and this month the company released an incomplete, early version of the software to developers.

The delay was announced in a blog post published on Tuesday evening by David J. Smith, RIM’s senior vice president for the PlayBook.

“As much as we’d love to have it in your hands today, we’ve made the difficult decision to wait to launch BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 until we are confident we have fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers and end-users,” Mr. Smith wrote.

The PlayBook and the coming smartphones share an operating system created by QNX Software Systems, a company RIM acquired in 2010. While RIM has not announced a specific release date beyond early next year for the BBX phones, as they will be known, several analysts now believe the PlayBook delay is a signal that the phones may also appear later than anticipated.

RIM did not respond to a request for comment.

“I don’t view the PlayBook in and of itself as important,” said Matthew Thornton, an analyst with Avian Securities in Boston. “I don’t think it has much of a future. But saying that the PlayBook O.S. is delayed until February is probably not a good sign.”

PlayBook has disappointed RIM since its release in April. RIM has shipped about 700,000 of the devices since April, about as many iPad tablets as Apple sells in a week. But the company acknowledged during a conference call about its financial results last month that many of them had remained unsold in warehouses and on store shelves.

Trying to reduce that inventory, RIM underwrote rebates and other discounts recently offered by several large retailers in the United States. It is not clear whether the promotions were able to reduce inventory.

Mr. Smith wrote in his blog post that when the new operating system does appear, it will not include BlackBerry Messenger, or B.B.M., instant messaging service despite earlier promises.

BlackBerry Messenger is a rare bright spot for RIM. It is particularly popular with teenagers and other young users because it avoids messaging charges from carriers. So not including it perplexes analysts.

“Why would you put out a device without your crown jewels?” Mr. Hyers asked.

While RIM has not explained why it was unable to include software for e-mail, calendars, instant messaging and contacts on the PlayBook from the beginning, Mr. Hyers and others say the problem may lie in the network used to keep that information synchronized in BlackBerrys.

RIM runs all data from BlackBerrys through its closed, global network to give greater security to corporate users and more efficient and faster Internet access to all of its customers.

As a way to further increase security, that network currently allows only a single hand-held device to access any given users’ account.

Reworking that network so that users can have both a phone and tablet on a single account, Mr. Hyers said, is a complex process and might be proving more difficult than RIM had anticipated.

Ted Schadler, an analyst with Forrester Research, said that the delay might be a sign that RIM has decided the PlayBook can be sold only to corporate customers with high security and reliability needs.

“RIM’s not doing anybody any favors by pretending to be a mass market player,” he said.

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